How to Create a Real Estate Map – Map Business Online

Posted on November 15, 2017 by Geoffrey Ives

Creating a basic local map, like a fifty-mile radius around a city, should not be a lot of work for any business mapping user whether you subscribe to Map Business Online or My Freakin Map’s Perfect.

In the real estate business, the usual online mapping programs for realtors don’t always cover every need. There may be a few expensive real estate mapping tools applied by large real estate conglomerates, but most one-off or small group realty firms require business mapping software they can afford and software they can figure out.

At $299.95 per user per year for the USA or Canada, I think Map Business Online has the price figured out. But what about building a wicked quick map of a specific area?

We recently got a call from a client who wanted a fast, real estate map. “Dude I just need a fifty-mile radius around a city with counties and major highways displayed.”  Seemed simple enough to me.

To build that map as requested took me all of one minute. It’s a straight forward process from the Map Business Online new map start screen – keeping in mind that you do need an annual subscription to access the city limits and highway overlays, which are premium layers.

So, the first thing I’d did was key in my city of choice into the address bar – “Springfield, IL.” That zooms the map into the middle of Springfield, IL (the area of interest) and places a mini-tool bar on the map near my center point.  I clicked the Radius Search button on that mini-toolbar and searched out 50 miles around my center point.

Once my circle was drawn on the map I pulled my Zoom View scroll bar in the upper right corner of the application back to see the entire 50-mile radius. I then turned on the County layer in Manage Map & Data and edited that layer, clicking the Edit Gear and choosing to make the counties 90% transparent and the county boundaries a thin red line (no pun intended.)

Next, I selected both the City Limits and a Highway layer from the Premium Layer or Add Map Layers button on the master toolbar. The highway layer didn’t require tweaking; it lays on top of the map background streets but adds the Interstate Highway Logo. I left the City Limit layer boundaries and fill untouched, but I did adjust City labels making the font larger and adjusting background color on the label.

I figure a real estate business may want some extra information, like the surrounding demographics, visible on the map for quick reference. So, using Map & Data, I clicked the Edit Gear on my City Limit layer and chose Labels and Format Labels.  Making sure the Auto Label tab was selected I:

  • Choose Number 1 of the five flexible label fields to edit
  • I selected Demographic Data as my data source
  • I chose Population 2017 for my first additional label field
  • I added a little explanatory text: “Pop:”
  • I repeated the above process for two more of the five flexile label fields
  • I then clicked Change Labels and viewed the results

Once I was done with labels, I viewed my map. This is an important stage in business map development.  You’ve taken the time to build a map, now make sure it does what you expected it to.  Ask yourself some critical mapping questions:

  • Is the map too busy? Did I lose the emphasis on my original intent?
  • Is there additional location information I could bring to bear on this map to make it more informative?
  • Does the map background enhance or detract from my presentation?
  • Are the colors I chose for map objects (the circle on this map) clearly displayed or do they blend in too much?  Would more transparency help or hurt the map view?
  • Is my zoom level of detail support the original business reason for the map?

You have many choices for sharing the map.  Generate image files in PNG or JPEG formats for presentation graphics.  Try a PDF map to print larger format maps or wall maps.  Or share the map as an interactive web map.  You could even use Map Business Online to present your map view.

Conducting a presentation while using Map Business Online is probably the coolest way to go, because you can emphasize layers and overlays by turning them on and off as you speak. Wowing everyone with your mapping skills as you emphasize your presentation point.

“In closing, shaded in red are the ZIP codes that show the most promise for our summer marketing campaign, based on disposable income and our key age demographics per ZIP code, and the number of two bedroom homes per city limit.”  And the crowd goes wild.

NEW! Refer a business associate to Map Business Online in exchange for a $20 Amazon Gift Card!

Find out why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution.

Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson jhenderson@spatialteq.com (800) 425-9035

MapPoint users please consider www.MapBusinessOnline.com as your MapPoint Replacement.

Please read customer reviews or review us at Capterra, G2Crowd (LinkedIn connected), or at the Salesforce.com AppExchange.

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How to Conduct Retail Market Analysis – Map Business Online

Posted on November 8, 2017 by Geoffrey Ives

A retail business sells a particular widget that home owners use. The retailer has determined, based on tracked data from advertising offers, that many consumers who live within a 15-mile radius of a store are willing to drive up to 15-miles to the store to buy the widget at a discounted price. Time for some retail demographic mapping.

The retail chain has a little over 290 store locations across the USA, and would like to understand more about their target audience.  They want to better understand the demographic make-up of the ZIP codes within a 15-mile circle surrounding each store. Census categories such as median income, ethnicities, and specific age groups are of interest.

Business mapping software, specifically Map Business Online, can be used to conduct the market analysis described above. In this case, Map Business Online become retail mapping software.

Setting Up the Market Analysis Project

In Map Business Online, the first step to a project like this is to import an address spreadsheet; one that includes all store location addresses across the USA (CA & UK too if necessary). Do this using the Plot Data button on the master tool bar. This location data import places a set of almost 300 data points on the map representing all store locations.

A next step could be to use the Market Analysis tool (option 1 – Search Data from Multiple Locations) to search the ZIP codes within 15-miles of all stores at once. This analysis, applied to those 300 store locations, can be set to include all ZIP codes with 15-mile radius of each store; essentially generating a list of all ZIP codes surrounding all stores out a distance of 15 miles. The result will be a marketing list of ZIP codes that can then be converted into a Territory and named appropriately.

In Map Business Online the concepts of sales territory and market area of interest are the same.

That named territory is then selected and viewed in the Data Window. Here the Map Business Online retail user can click the More Data button located in the lower right of the territory analysis view, to add all the demographic layers to the territory analysis.  This works great for most of the demographic layers in Map Business Online. But, to get a selection of population layers, like a set of specific age ranges by population, into that mix, Calculated Data Columns (CDC) should be applied.

Calculated Data Columns

In Map Business Online some of the demographic data is segmented into layers. For instance, population by age is grouped by age ranges:

  • Population (2017): Under 5 years
  • Population (2017): 5 to 9 years
  • Population (2017): 10 to 14 years

Household Income is group by income ranges:

  • Households (2015): Income $15,000 – $19,999
  • Households (2015): Income $20,000 – $24,999
  • Households (2015): Income $25,000 – $29,999

These ranges can be combined into one data layer using Calculated Data Columns. This combination makes your market analysis easier to digest and comprehend. To combine these data layers the Map Business Online map creator will need to set up a calculated data column for the target data layers to be combined and specifically for that map layer – in our case ZIP codes.

In Manage Map & Data, the Map Business Online user hovers their mouse cursor over the ZIP code layer. They click open the Edit Gear and, under the General tab, choose Mange Calculated Data Columns.  In the CDC Wizard they click the Add Data Column. The number format is selected and then the demographic options are reviewed to find the segmented demographic ranges they want to combine.

Once the target layers are found in the drop down list, the user selects the ones to combine and clicks the arrow to move them to the top right side. (Notice the ability to multiply and divide exists in CDC too. Think ratios, which can come in handy in market analysis.)

Finish Up Your Analysis

Once a Calculated Data Column is saved, the user returns to the Territory Analysis view in the Data Window.  The retailer once again clicks More Data and in the drop down selects Calculated Data to add the combined demographic segments to the market analysis.

Once a territory analysis is complete, the user can filter the Territory view to review specific ZIP code groups, or City areas.  There are many ways to filter a data project like this. Use the Filter Data on Map check box in the upper left of the Data Window to isolate these groups on the map.

This market analysis now shows the pertinent demographic makeup for all ZIP codes within 15-miles of a target store. So for stores not stocking the widget yet, decisions can be made based on a certain amount of analysis.

Additional visual data layers like a heat map layer describing sales information and drive time polygon analysis may be valid compliments to this type of analysis. Just make sure the additional data adds value to your map audience before you add too much clutter to your market analysis.

Completed Use of Market Analysis

Once a market analysis project is complete, a user can export the file for use outside of Map Business Online.  The export button is the far-right button on the Data Window tool bar.  Thus, Map Business Online generates Market Analysis reports which are exported as a CSV file.

Market Analysis users can also save and export map views as PDF, PNG or JPEG files. These are great for Power Point presentations or overhead projector meetings. If you feel comfortable with Map Business Online, use the tool itself to present your market analysis results.

Retailers will make use of Map Business Online market analysis, but the tool is used by database analysts, sales managers and analysts, and of course market analysts.

NEW! Refer a business associate to Map Business Online in exchange for a $20 Amazon Gift Card!

Find out why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution.

Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson jhenderson@spatialteq.com (800) 425-9035

MapPoint users please consider www.MapBusinessOnline.com as your MapPoint Replacement.

Please read customer reviews or review us at Capterra, G2Crowd (LinkedIn connected), or at the Salesforce.com AppExchange.

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How to Conduct Optimized Routing – Map Business Online

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Geoffrey Ives

Optimized vehicle routing in Map Business Online means the tool’s routing engine chooses the most efficient path for your vehicle route. A user can create up to one hundred and fifty stops on a route in Map Business Online with a full-year or team subscription. Each route will generate turn-by-turn directions, as well as an estimated time duration and distance measure in miles or kilometers.  This information is presented to the user after the route has been processed.

That’s a pretty good start for routing tools for an online business mapping software that only costs $299.95 per user per year (USA coverage area.). And it gets better.

Basic Routing

An Map Business Online route user is not forced to conduct optimized routing. The route could be conducted as a basic point-to-point route; the route follows stops in the order presented as the route is created. You could route from a starting point to a finish point with no stops.

An Map Business Online route user can drop points on the map with the draw tool (Add Location Button) or input addresses one at a time from the address bar. Hovering over those points, a car appears. Click the car icon to begin selecting the route stops.

Further, if you’re organized and have a spreadsheet of address stops, you can import that list into Map Business Online which will place location points across the map area.  The Data Window will open to display a tabular view of your imported data. Hover over the left side of any of those imported rows until the Car icon appears, click to set the stops incrementally – just like on the point labels.

With your data imported and selected in the Data Window the map user may choose to click the Add All Rows to Route button – located just before the far-right button of the Data Window Tool Bar. This button places all your locations from your imported dataset in the Route generator.  Click the route button to route to all locations at once.

Turn-By-Turn Directions

Once a route has been generated in Map Business Online, a set of detailed turn-by-turn directions is created for printing and general sharing. This directions document includes mileage and time estimates for route itself.

There are a lot of options in the Map Business Online route tool that help a user customize their route. A route, as mentioned before, can be optimized – that is, the stop order will be routed in the most efficient manner possible based in the inherent road network information. Road network information includes road classifications, speed limits, turn restrictions, one-way and two-way streets, traffic histories. All these factors impact optimization.

A route can be created for a round trip or just a one-way trip. You will note that a route file is generated upon route creation. That route file can be shared with others in various formats, including formats for GPS personal navigation devices (GPX, ITN).

Once a route is generated the user can still adjust stops. Change stop orders by dragging up and down.  Delete existing or add new stops.  Note there is a favorites option in the Route tool bar, this lets you add recurring stops to an easy access list – I use it for my home address and for the Maine Animal Farm where I take my grandkids.

Time Window Support

Check the Route Options button in the route window to explore time compensating adjustments including route start times, stay durations, and route end times. Imported spreadsheets of route stops can also include columns for stop stay durations and other route time intervals.  These time options allow user controls for entire day or week planning.

Route Avoids

Map Business Online also provides an ability to create areas of route avoidance. Route avoidance options come in handy if you are aware of traffic congestion, construction issues, or road and bridge closures along your projected routes.

To build a route avoid area simply use your navigation tools to zoom into the problem area and then select a Map Business Online draw or search tool, like a polygon search tool.  Create a polygon on a map that defines the area of avoidance. In the polygon draw layer edit box check the box labeled “Set as route barrier.”

Now any further routes pushed through that area will seek an alternate route around your polygon.

A Route Map – Your Map – Your Way

Shared Maps – Shared Routes

One of the outstanding features of Map Business Online is the MapShare option.  MapShare is the ability to share a map publicly for zero or low-cost – depending upon quantity of web sessions.  Each shared map can include a shared route.  Your shared map viewers (at no charge) will be able to do the following:

  • View your shared map including routes, sales territories, points & labels, and a data window view.
  • Edit the shared routes
  • Create multi-stop routes incrementally – up to 150 stops
  • Conduct save-able and exportable data queries

Essentially, your map viewers, with who you share you maps, can expect, change or create new routes. How freakin’ cool is that?

Map Business Online Routing Applied

Map Business Online users apply routing for a variety of applications:

  • Sales Planning – Begin with sales territory maps. Route to your customer list. Plan you trips. Include surrounding prospects. Analyze sales results
  • Field Staff Management – Establish coverage areas and territories. Create, share and adjust routes and schedules. Confirm field activity took place. Monitor customer requirements and field work orders
  • Retail Display Management – Route to retail stores based on a planned schedule. Update shelf displays and report sales results & inventory adjustments. These routes could cover entire weeks of driving times
  • Real Estate Travel – Plan open house trips for key clients. Import a list of home locations for an optimized route plan – track features, home photos, and critical data

 

Replace MapPoint

Many of Map Business Online routing features serve to replace Microsoft MapPoint, lost to many business users since

  1. Consider Map Business Online as you go to MapPoint replacement and enjoy optimized routing, up-to-date map data, and a truly easy-to-use interface.

What’s not to like?  Let’s us know how your using the tool and as always, contact us for technical support should you require it.

NEW! Refer a business associate to Map Business Online in exchange for a $20 Amazon Gift Card!

Find out why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution.

Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson jhenderson@spatialteq.com (800) 425-9035

MapPoint users please consider www.MapBusinessOnline.com as your MapPoint Replacement.

Please read customer reviews or review us at Capterra, G2Crowd (LinkedIn connected), or at the Salesforce.com AppExchange.

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Industrial Manufacturing & Services Customers – Map Business Online

Posted on October 25, 2017 by Geoffrey Ives

Industrial manufacturers and large service organizations derive significant benefit from business mapping software.  From territory management to field staff management, these varied businesses and industries each use online business mapping for their own particular applications.  These are a growing segment – the business mapping enterprise.

Often, business mapping is applied as supplemental software for sales and marketing departments – typically for sales territory management or some sort of market analysis. However, Map Business Online applications in industrial manufacturing and services industries are not limited to just sales and marketing.

Many large-sized companies apply business mapping to the management of field staff, to C-level strategic planning support, and even to product planning. As the world grows smaller and more and more businesses compete globally through online presence, the importance of relating your business directly to geographic realities becomes paramount. No competent business should expand into a new country, state or ZIP code without a business map visualization of their current and future client demographics.

Map Business Online Industrial Customers

USA manufacturing often gets a bad name from environmentalists and progressives, perhaps in isolated cases for good reason. But, for me (a progressive), industrial manufacturing has always carried a certain fascination.  Regardless of the specific industry, most factories are focused like a laser on turning out a quality product, reducing waste, improving output, and complying with regulations as required. They must do these things to be compliant with laws and profitable for investors and stake holders.

When you work in manufacturing you see that balancing act from the inside. Will we meet production quotas? Will our sales goal be achieved?  Will the new scrubbers pass the inspection requirements? How will the manufacturing staff get rid of that pile of waste material in the back yard?

Manufacturing facilities are there for a reason, to fulfill a demand for a product, to turn a profit, to ship on time, and to provide jobs. The specific business may be metal manufacturing, chemical production, textile extrusion, or plastic forming; they all face similar challenges. Each business does their best to maintain production quotas largely through the efforts of tough-as-nails production staff, working a myriad of problems every day of the year.

Business mapping gets applied to a variety of challenges in manufacturing. Map visualizations most often help focus the outside sales team, but these tools are sometimes applied to production requirements. Maps defining raw material and finished goods warehousing networks can be critical to establishing Just-In-Time (JIT) delivery processes.

Chemical production companies have utilized Map Business Online business maps to describe product sales by territory, region and division. Such maps supplement a sales and marketing effort while supporting mature industry market requirements. Fulfilling consumer demand for paints or automobile tires is perhaps less sales driven and is instead subject to very predictable market demands.  Car tires get worn out – the consumer requirement is quite predictable. Business maps can help visualize such demand and fulfillment systems.

Solving a waste stream issue should begin with a business map describing at-risk areas, possible recycling opportunities and compliant transportation routes for scrap load deliveries. Recycling or proper disposal of any substance in large volumes is definitely a geographic problem that can definitely use a mapping solution.

I believe that conducting strategic planning without well thought-out supporting business map visualizations, is a huge mistake. Nothing inspires out-of-the-box thinking like a new map visualization.  Interesting strategic data layers for manufacturers might include nationwide networks of reseller locations, Amazon.com ship-to locations, or unemployment statistics divided by population and visualized by county or ZIP code.

Advanced Enterprise Business Mapping

Consider identifying the enterprise’s best new market potential with a combination of business maps and business geodata. The combination of industry location-data (NAICS points, employee information, sales stats) with an accurate and demographically enhance business map is powerful. We can demo this for you.

Enterprise customers using Salesforce.com CRM software should pay close attention to Map Business Online market analysis tools and sales territory design software. You won’t find such a generous an import allowance (100,000 location records per map) and advanced territory visualization tools in competing products.  You just won’t.

That MapPoint Problem

Lately, a major enterprise level business map challenge is replacing Microsoft MapPoint.  Moving to cloud-based mapping services like Map Business Online, can be a paradigm shift for a slow-to-change manufacturing culture. Take heart that thousands of businesses have already made the change and are thankful for it.

If you’re business is still MapPoint strapped, you should look forward to its replacement. New features, updated data, conversion tools await.

The Services Industry

Services as an industry category covers a broad range of business types. At Map Business Online, we never know what service may be calling seeking online business mapping. The list is endless but includes repeat business types like copier repair, swimming pool maintenance, dentistry services, and fuel delivery companies. How many of you service guys are there out there?

General tradespeople catering to various kinds of home repair often seek maps to organize their sales and marketing. The plumbers who think about advertising by creating a demographic profile of their best ZIP code are the plumbers managing rapid growth. Demographic profiling sounds complicated; it’s not. Choose your best ZIP code and study its demographic break down, then look for similar ZIP codes. That’s all inclusive in Map Business Online.

Service businesses usually must manage field staff and will utilize optimized vehicle routing software and field staff visualization maps to organize their coverage areas.

Elder home care agencies have a staggering challenge when it comes to the daily routing of clinicians and aides. Business mapping can help to organize agency census home locations and assist in matching clinician skill sets to patient needs.  Imported business data can be used to inform traveling staff of appointment times, schedules, or even which homes have intimidating dogs. “Don’t pat Skipper.”

Most services industries cater to customers that, as a group, can be analyzed as a demographic category. Swimming pool companies will seek areas with a certain amount of expendable income. Orthodontists will try to reach families with multiple children.  Some businesses might combine more than one Census category to analyze their customer base.

For instance, a remedial reading service might seek higher incomes and multiple children as a general market.  Business mapping can define your audience using a calculated demographic formula and then display highest potential areas – color shading those ZIP codes that reflect your most fruitful demographic profile.

These two general business categories – Industrial Manufacturing and Services – represent the fastest growing segments of Map Business Online’s business in 2017.  The variety of business types, large and small, are a delight to support. Though many of the mapping applications are similar each industry has its own twist on mapping requirements.

Every day is a new adventure.

NEW! Refer a business associate to Map Business Online in exchange for a $20 Amazon Gift Card!

Find out why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution.

Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson jhenderson@spatialteq.com (800) 425-9035

MapPoint users please consider www.MapBusinessOnline.com as your MapPoint Replacement.

Please read customer reviews or review us at Capterra, G2Crowd (LinkedIn connected), or at the Salesforce.com AppExchange.

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Examples of Imported User Data – MapBusinessOnline

Posted on October 23, 2017 by Geoffrey Ives

The first thing a new business mapping user does, based on our internal stats, is import data and view it on the map. But what data are they importing and how are they using their business mapping software?

Well, this blog often discusses the example of customer and prospect data as imported into MapBusinessOnline. While customer data is common, there are many different types of data imported into MapBusinessOnline online mapping software. It’s not always about sales organizations.

Examples of Data Imports in MapBusinessOnline

We regularly speak to MapBusinessOnline trial users or subscription owners who import business data for the following applications:

·         Residential listings for voter canvasing. These data layers tend to be large and reflect densely populated areas.  Campaign workers go door to door to inform or simply speak with voters. Their address tracking is managed through address datasets imported into MapBusinessOnline. Imported data is used to generate target lists and routes.

·         ATM cash machines.  As you might imagine, tracking ATM machines is pretty critical. (Remember that episode in Breaking Bad with the ATM in the living room?)  Usually, valuable equipment like ATM’s are geolocated and tracked by latitude and longitude coordinates. Additional data columns in the imported data might include last inspection time and machine status. MapBusinessOnline holds the lat/long data in tabular format while displaying ATM location points on the map.

·         Bill Board locations. Still a primary marketing tool, bill boards require updates and inspections for a variety of reasons. A dataset of bill boards might be tracked on a map by marketing campaign. Additional data columns might include the number of advertising platforms per board, inspection dates, front side & back side content, and advertising expiration dates.

·         Retail display or end-cap placements. Large retailers let third-party inventory providers manage their own retail displays. Many retailers outsourced stock management to display management firms. These third-party inventory management providers use MapBusinessOnline to track where displays are located by retailer, the expiration dates, and other pertinent campaign data. Often display specific maintenance reps are routed to these locations based on a weekly schedule.

·         Swimming pool maintenance. How many swimming pools are there in North America anyway? Look at an aerial image to get a sense of it. The installation of a swimming pool is expensive, but I think contractors make more money on the upkeep of pools than they do on installations. We’ve got a lot of pool companies using MapBusinessOnline to track pool chemical treatments and maintenance records by address. This is a classic service business application of MapBusinessOnline. And they also use the tool for marketing campaigns.

·         Guess who conducts a lot of market analysis using Map Business Online?  Dentists and orthodontists. I suspect they tend to analyze the demographics of groups of ZIP codes, looking for expendable income and children of a certain age. So, ZIP code imports and ZIP code marketing areas, are commonly subjected to market analysis to determine new potential areas for expansion. Fortunately for me, and my family budget, my kids both have pretty nice teeth.

·         At MapBusinessOnline we get calls from Banks all the time. These could be from smaller banks or credit unions or larger financial institutions. These guys will import client data and prospect data for marketing campaigns or for analysis. But they’ll also import home or business location address data with associated assessment values or business-based values. Such data can provide banks with a visualization of their loan pools and associated risks.

·         Similar to banks, Realtors will view residential and business address databases.  For realtors, these home locations are actually inventory records.  If you’ve shopped for a house lately you’re familiar with the accuracy limitations of Zillow and other real estate websites. Houses of interest are suddenly “sale pending.” In some cases, later you’ll find out the sale fell through. Open houses come and go. Sometimes it helps to maintain your own portfolio of properties. MapBusinessOnline can provide support for such analysis.

·          Marketing Agencies use MapBusinessOnline to manage their campaigns by location. Think about newspaper ads. How does one track all of those retail ads shoved into the Sunday papers? Well they are tracked, and mapping applications help because a user can initiate, monitor, and assess campaigns by a ZIP code map.  Store traffic records are also tracked and compared against campaign ad placements and discount redemptions to determine the most effective ads.

Imported data used for map visualization is a great way to control business processes. And if you’re business isn’t doing it, you may not be selling as much as you could be.

_______________________________________________

Find out why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution. The best replacement for Microsoft MapPoint happens to be the most affordable.

To access MapBusinessOnline, please register and then download the Map App from the website – https://www.mapbusinessonline.com/App-Download.aspx.

After installing the Map App, the MapBusinessOnline launch button will be in the Windows’ Start Menu or Mac Application folder. Find the MapBusinessOnline folder in the Start Menu scrollbar. Click the folder’s dropdown arrow and choose the MapBusinessOnline option.

The Map App includes the Map Viewer app for free non-subscriber map sharing.

Please read customer reviews or review us at Capterra, or g2crowd

Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson jhenderson@spatialteq.com

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Use Map Templates to Your Advantage

Posted on October 11, 2017 by Geoffrey Ives

Like most software applications, Map Business Online has a save button that lets you save the business maps you’ve created. Even though Map Business Online almost always starts up displaying the map you last worked on, it’s a good practice to save your map work. Simply click the third button in from the left on the Master Toolbar – the floppy disk icon – and save your work.

“A valuable business map is a saved business map.” – Harry Trumap

After you’ve saved your work, you can always search for your map in the manage Saved Maps folder icon – the second from left button on the tool bar. On occasion, a panicked user will call, desperate to find the map(s) they’ve lost, and nine out of ten times they are found in the saved map folder.  (The tenth time someone logged in using their credentials and deleted their maps.)

I would suggest to many users that you consider adding a variation on map saving to your Map Business Online repertoire. Instead of always saving a map in the My Maps folder, consider saving your map as a Template map in the My Templates folder. This option is a simple drop down away from My Maps.

Santa Rosa Fire

Template Advantages

Saving your map as a map template requires some thought. You need to remember that you created that template map the next time you make a similar map that can benefit from the template process.  That’s the whole point of a template, to avoid senseless duplication of effort. Get in the habit of looking in the template folder before you create a new business map from scratch.

If you are building maps for business, your maps may contain several to many map layers that are pertinent to your business. They could contain draw objects, imported data layers, demographic data, drive time polygons, or sales territories. Any one of these layers may add value to maps designed to support aspects of your business. Which means you will use these layers over and over.

Map templates allow the map creator to take time building the map infrastructure for a major business map project, and then save it for use in any map you build moving forward. Save your most pertinent layers as a map template.

This means the next time you are asked to build a map for a department, you’ve already got a basic structure to work with. Remember, you can always turn off a layer for a particular map. Think of the time you’ll save.

Once your template map is saved, simply open the template to start a new map version. What I do is this: open a My Template map and immediately save it under another name in the My Maps folder. I then edit away, creating a new My Map version.

Sometimes I forget to save it in the My Maps folder up front.  I just save it after a couple of hours of editing. That’s OK. Just try to avoid saving over your existing template. Be careful and methodical in your map saving process.

If you’ve imported data into your template map and built a variant saved map from that template, the data will carry into the new map and will stay with the new map, even if you delete your original template map or data layer.

Keep in mind, template maps cannot be shared as a publicly shared interactive web-map. You’ll need to save it as a My Map version to access MapShare.

You’ll find the Save Map and Open map dialogue includes some additional functions. Within the Save map dialog you can rename a map or delete a map. You will notice that you cannot delete every map – one map, at least, must remain.

The Open Map dialogue also includes a filename adjustment option and the delete option. A user can also launch the MapShare wizard from within Open Map. This comes in handy sometimes.  The Open Map folder will also display a preview of your map – it’s kind of small, but will help you recognize the map before opening it.

Examples of Map Templates

Every company develops their own map work flow. In my experience, businesses use Map Templates to support mapping that occurs over and over, often these maps include significant map layers that take time to create:

  • ZIP Code Filler Maps – Map Business Online lets the users create maps that fill in areas with no ZIP code. (See previous blog post.) National parks and military installations out west do not have ZIP codes associated with them leaving white spaces on ZIP code maps.  By choosing ZIP codes with Fillers in Manage Map & Data a user can take the time to create a ZIP codes base map with fillers. This is a three-hour process. Be sure to save that ZIP codes map as a template so the next time your filled in base-map is ready to rock.
  • Advanced Territory Maps – Businesses with significant and complex territories, such as those including regions and divisions, will be wise to save their baseline territory map as a map template. That base-map template could show the entire territory structure with sales rep home addresses and territory goals and objectives. Each month, a manager or admin simply overlays the previous month’s results. Perhaps a new map is created only once a year as the new sales plan is developed?  You decide.
  • The Boss’s Favorite Map – We all know how it is. The boss wants his map a certain way. Maybe she prefers a satellite background, with key map objects drawn in, and only the county map layer turned on.  Regardless of how your boss prefers the map, save a version as a template to make things easier on yourself next time.

Map templates save you time and that means your next map will tend to be more accurate. If you truly love your maps you’ll save them and use some of them as map templates.

NEW! Refer a business associate to Map Business Online in exchange for a $20 Amazon Gift Card!

Find out why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution.

Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson jhenderson@spatialteq.com (800) 425-9035

MapPoint users please consider www.MapBusinessOnline.com as your MapPoint Replacement.

Please read customer reviews or review us at Capterra, G2Crowd (LinkedIn connected), or at the Salesforce.com AppExchange.

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How to Create a Map From an Excel Spreadsheet

Posted on October 5, 2017 by Geoffrey Ives

Excel is one of the most widely used business spreadsheet programs. However, the raw data in an Excel spreadsheet can only tell you so much. Tools such as MapBusinessOnline make it easy to translate Excel documents into a visual format to help you identify emerging trends and make impactful presentations. With Excel and MapBusinessOnline, you can:

  • Overlay your sales data with current demographic information to better understand who your customers are.
  • Create heat maps that show you where your busiest regions are.
  • Analyze sales data and create custom territories that can define your team’s areas of responsibility.
  • Export spatial query results as CSV files that can open in Excel.

On this page, you’ll learn how to create an Excel map with Map Business Online and look closely at some of this feature’s potential applications.

Working With Excel in Map Business Online

MapBusinessOnline works with Excel 97-2003 (*.xls) and Excel 2007 or later (*.xlsx) files. If you use a supported CRM such as Salesforce, click the “Plot data on map” toolbar icon and follow the instructions. You can also import.TXT files.

You can access MapBusinessOnline’s full suite of potent symbolization and color shading tools to create customized maps and other visual aids from your spreadsheet. You’ll have the chance to select the file, worksheet, or spreadsheet you want imported. The tool will help you define naming conventions and labeling through the import process. Create customized maps and other visual aids from your spreadsheet.

In some cases, achieving optimal results may require reorganizing your data sheets if you work with an unsupported format. The critical prep work is ensuring your address components are in separate columns – Name – Address – City – State – ZIP. The MapBusinessOnline website contains resources that can help you prepare an Excel file for mapping. Customers also have access to world-class one-on-one support, which puts assistance for any plotting or importing issue just a Chat away – or an email.

Who Can Benefit?

MapBusinessOnline is a versatile platform that offers a variety of location-based benefits to any business or organization. Using it to plot data on a map from an Excel document can be helpful for:

  • Businesses that rely on an inside or outside sales organization. MapBusinessOnline can help you track trends over time, identify underserved territories, and make the best use of your sales team and other resources by leveraging your existing Excel sales data.
  • ZIP Code Mapping Software – Excel spreadsheets loaded with customers and prospects can be overlaid on a business map to expose ZIP code or county opportunities.
  • Franchises or multi-location businesses. Use Map Business Online to create heat maps from Excel data showing which locations perform best and where improvement may be needed. You can also use Map Business Online to identify areas with strong sales potential and plan the future of your business accordingly.
  • Nonprofits and government agencies. Utility companies, contractors, and social service providers can use Map Business Online to translate Excel data into a visual format. Show who you serve and your impact on your community — whether you’re pitching to funders or trying to streamline your operations, Map Business Online helps you do more with your data.
  • Healthcare agencies managing a staff of field clinicians. Map Business Online will enable organized views showing patient locations and available staff work or home locations, color-coded by skill set.
  • Marketing departments will import campaign-related spreadsheets for location analysis by demographics and to organize geographic segmentation of campaign lists. Tracking results by the campaign will help determine where future campaigns will be tried.
  • Insurance claims adjusters and underwriters will import a variety of datasets to assess risk and claim veracity and generally plan responses for individual claims and extensive disaster processing.
  • Companies that have been using Microsoft MapPoint.  Eight years ago, Microsoft canceled the powerful MapPoint business mapping software. But today, there are plenty of MapPoint replacements, including MapBusinessOnline.  Check out MapBusinessOnline sales territory alignment, Map Business Online multi-stop optimized routing, or MapBusinessOnline market analysis tools as replacements for your MapPoint capabilities.

Use MapBusinessOnline to map sales data, customer addresses, business units, competitor locations, or any other information. Try this versatile, intuitive platform by signing up for a free one-month trial today.

_______________________________________________

Discover why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution. The best replacement for Microsoft MapPoint happens to be the most affordable.

To access MapBusinessOnline, please register and download the Map App from the website – https://www.mapbusinessonline.com/App-Download.aspx.

After installing the Map App, the MapBusinessOnline launch button will be in the Windows Start Menu or Mac Application folder. Find the MapBusinessOnline folder in the Start Menu scrollbar. Click the folder’s dropdown arrow and choose the MapBusinessOnline option.

The Map App includes the Map Viewer app for free non-subscriber map sharing.

Please read customer reviews or review us at Capterra or g2crowd.

Contact: Geoffrey Ives at geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson at jhenderson@spatialteq.com.

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Five Questions You Can Answer With Demographic Mapping

Posted on October 5, 2017 by Geoffrey Ives

Demographic data from a national census or another reputable source can provide rich context to your sales territories and related goals and objectives. When it comes to your business, raw numbers don’t tell the entire story. The more you can know about your customers — including where and how they live — the better equipped you will be to meet their needs with appropriate marketing promotions and initiatives.

Map Business Online is one of the few business mapping software platforms to incorporate current census data from U.S., UK and Canadian sources. With it, you can create complex, illustrative maps that let you know more about your customers and the people in your service area. In this article, we look at five questions you can answer with a demographic map.

 

  1. Who Are My Customers — and What Do They Need?

You may think you know who your customers are, but a brief interaction doesn’t tell the whole story. Especially if you make most of your sales online, a census data map can be a highly useful tool. Import your customer address lists into Map Business Online. Use the tool to view customers against ZIP codes. Now consider household income by ZIP code or determine average age or gender, among other factors related to your customers. What do common demographic categories tell you about your customers?

  1. Who Are We Not Reaching?

A census demographic map also provides information about who your customers aren’t. Use it to find out what demographics are gravitating toward your competitors and pinpoint areas and individuals that aren’t being reached at all. With the insights gained from a demographic map, you can develop more effective marketing and identify gaps in your current lineup of products or services.

  1. Where Can We Find More Customers?

One of the easiest ways to grow your business with a minimal amount of risk is simply to find more customers. A census demographic map helps you pin down who your “typical” customer is in terms of age, background, income and other factors. Using Map Business Online, you can find ZIP codes, counties and other geographic regions that fit a similar profile as your current hot spots, and direct sales and marketing resources there.

A Dot Density Map Visualization

  1. Where Can We Expand?

If you’re already making the most of your existing team, it may be time to expand to a new location or franchise your business. Census mapping can be used to drill down on potential new locations to determine if they are suitable for your business. Develop your optimum ZIP code type and search for new areas. Make the site selection process smarter with Map Business Online’s enhanced demographic and household income mapping functionalities. Develop an expansion planning map to help guide your thinking.

  1. How Can We Improve Service Delivery?

Demographic mapping isn’t just for businesses. For nonprofits and government agencies, census map data can tell you more about what services are needed, and where. With this information, you can run a leaner organization that makes the most of what may be a limited budget. Use delivery planning maps to help identify delivery times based on start and stop locations. Create optimized routes that get your services or products delivered om time.

Working With Map Business Online

Map Business Online is an intuitive, cloud-based platform that lets you create business maps that selectively incorporate sales and census information. Use it to identify trends as they develop over time, or take a snapshot of your current customer base. Try it for yourself by signing up for a one-month trial today.

NEW! Refer a business associate to Map Business Online in exchange for a $20 Amazon Gift Card!

Find out why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution.

Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson jhenderson@spatialteq.com (800) 425-9035

MapPoint users please consider www.MapBusinessOnline.com as your MapPoint Replacement.

Please read customer reviews or review us at Capterra, G2Crowd (LinkedIn connected), or at the Salesforce.com AppExchange.

 

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How to Configure Drive Time Based Territories | Map Business Online

Posted on October 4, 2017 by Geoffrey Ives

Map Business Online provides both territory alignment tools and drive time analysis queries.  These two powerful tools can be combined to define your businesses’ territory assignments in a way that supports specific business realities. 

This exercise is a core feature of advanced business mapping software.

Customer Data

A good place to start is by understanding the type of customers you cater to.  This will vary from industry to industry. In some cases, you may be able to specify a few NAICS or SIC codes that define the  core customers in your business. In the case of retail establishments, the customer may be better defined by Census Bureau categories such as age, income level, or gender.

Whether your use industry location data, Census data, or some other customer identifier, your business map layers, like ZIP codes or counties, can be easily appended with industry or demographic data.  This means your analysis will support a definition of your most critical customer types.

Often a simple heat map view of customer types by industry or customer address data can be used to highlight the specific regions that harbor the majority of your customer activity. Such areas should be located at the center of your territories.

Drive Time Polygons

Drive times can be used to define the coverage areas of traveling sales people and inside sales people. Drive time is sometimes referred to as windshield time. How much time behind the wheel does your company feel is reasonable for a traveling sales person? How many ZIP codes should an inside sales person be responsible for? You decide.

For many companies that driving time allowance may be less than an hour.  Sales managers want their sales people interacting with customers not driving.  For other companies, especially those selling expensive systems to corporate customers, a four-hour drive time might be fine if it gets the sales person in front of the right decision maker.

For more operationally focused companies, efficiencies are a primary concern. For example, insurance companies may create field based territories with specific driving time ranges.  They’ll want as many field claims filed as possible, all investigated within a time frame. Travel costs will be tracked carefully to avoid out of control expenses.

By assigning drive time areas, businesses are limiting the travel time of their employees based on experience and situational awareness. From that drive time polygon on the map, a territory can be easily created that assigns ZIP codes, counties or Census tracts to specific individuals as areas of responsibility.

For retailers drive time may be more a function of how long it takes a prospective customer to drive to their location. An ad in the Sunday Paper might interest a customer until they realize it’s a forty-five-minute drive. Realistic drive times may vary by retail product. A single mom may be willing to drive no more than ten minutes to pick-up a pizza but up to a half hour to take her kids to an indoor playground.

Drive time polygons may or may not make sense for your company’s territory models. But, if you’re raising an eyebrow as you read this blog, give the drive time concept some thought.

Beginning to create territories out of DT polygons

Drive time Territories

The real beauty of drive time designated territory assignments is the ability to overlay related business data such as sales or purchasing activity, travel expenses, prospects and customer inquiries, field data collected, and many other types of business data. Connecting a territory to a drive time helps control expenses, measure customer response times, and communicate company expectations.

The Map Business Online workflow is straight forward.  Import and display the customer data you want to work with – NAICS codes by ZIP code or customer location data –  then heat map that data to show the areas of maximum sales intensity. Use those high intensity areas as your territory center points.

Select the Map Business Online drive time polygon tool. Place a point in the center of an area of high intensity. Choose the drive time timing that works for your team – it could be 60, 90, 180 up to 480 minutes. You decide. Execute the drive time query.

Resist applying the resultant polygon to query a territory for a while. Click the search option wizard close and simply review your map.  Repeat this exercise for all your key areas. You decide how many drive time polygons to construct based on:

  • The number of traveling sale people (currently or in the future)
  • Your understanding of your key business areas
  • Major metropolitan areas

Once your drive time polygons are created take some time to look over the map. Discuss it with your team and ask questions like:

  • Are we adequately covering our key areas of business?
  • Are there any areas of significant overlap? How do we manage those areas of overlap?
  • Where do your existing sales people start their day in comparison to your drive time polygon center points?

Once you’ve considered your new map, take the time to create territory areas out of the drive time polygon network you’ve created.  Click the polygon then choose the Blue Puzzle piece icon which allows you to select ZIP codes or counties as a territory basis.  Remember to give those territory areas some transparency by using the slider control associated with the Territory Layer in Manage Map and Data.

The process of creating drive time based territories will inform your business. You’ll be considering key geographic markets, travel expenses, sales staffing, and the business’s future’s goals and objectives.

Let us know what other things you learned through this process. Drive time territories can become the individual measuring stick by which businesses can determine what progress is being made toward goals, how healthy the sales team is, and is the business growing or declining.

NEW! Refer a business associate to Map Business Online in exchange for a $20 Amazon Gift Card!

Find out why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution.

Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson jhenderson@spatialteq.com (800) 425-9035

MapPoint users please consider www.MapBusinessOnline.com as your MapPoint Replacement.

Please read customer reviews or review us at Capterra, G2Crowd (LinkedIn connected), or at the Salesforce.com AppExchange.

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Using a Business Map for House Hunting

Posted on September 27, 2017 by Geoffrey Ives

Business mapping software can sometimes be applied to your own personal business. My wife and I are considering purchasing a new home, closer to Portland, Maine. We currently live an hour away in a beautiful rural community. However, services are few and driving to the hospital takes a half an hour at a minimum.

Anyway, we’ve focused in on several seaside communities just south of Portland. Over the last few months through the search process we’ve fine-tuned our requirement.  Barb decided this weekend we should attend a few realtor-sponsored open houses to get more of a sense of what our options are – costs, neighborhoods, proximity to conservation  areas, and proximity to bad industrial stuff.

I saw this as an opportunity to meet a whole new array of realtors who are plugged into the market. But what’s the best way to get our needs across to these busy realtors, in a way that they’ll remember the Ives when they run across the perfect house for us?  How about a map?

Using Map Business Online I created a new map.  I saved it as Our House Search. Using the Zoom In/Out Magnifier I focused the map extent around the towns of Cape Elizabeth, South Portland, and Scarborough, Maine.

I used the draw tools to create five or six polygons describing the neighborhoods we’re most interested in. This was important because we (mostly I) want distance between our home and busy highways, huge oil storage tanks in South Portland, and noisy train track areas. While we cannot afford ocean front property we’d like to be able to walk to the shore or have a short drive to a beach for walking. Barb also likes the idea of a neighborhood – me, not so much.

I set the polygon fill at pink with high transparency so that the areas we’re only slightly differentiated and you could still see the map areas behind the map objects. I also used black as a border on the polygons for clear definition.

I then added a text box to the map with our contact information and our three basic requirements for a home in the area. Just to give the realtors a quick grasp of our core needs. Using bold black text, I added a darker pink background to the text box to make it standout.

I decided to print six copies in color to handout at the open houses. I set my zoom and pan to exactly the image I wanted in the handout. To fill an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper fully, I set my printer page to landscape – that’s the natural Map Business Online print orientation.  In the print button, instead of using the top options for desktop printing, which can sometimes leave some blank open space, I used the second option “print map that will center on current map view.” This meant I’d save my map as a PDF and then print from a PDF file. No biggy.

At the Print Map dialogue for paper settings, I chose Custom Paper Size. I set my size to 12″ x 9″ with tiny margins. The preview gave me a real sense of how it would look after printing. I saved the map as a PDF and then printed from that file to black & white to see the printed layout.  Happy with that, I printed six color copies and headed into town.

My wife used several online real estate mapping tools as part of her research. She found Zillow to be just a basic catch-all map with limited data accuracy. 

Estately offered a nice open house planning option. She could easily create an exportable list of properties of interest.  We used it to create our Open House trip.  Unfortunately, there were a lot of open houses that simply didn’t take place. Four open houses were incorrectly advertised. What’s up with that?

I handed out my map to several realtors and we’ve had some follow-up calls already. You never know what might come of it.  In sales, the more connect points you can provide the better off you’ll be in the long run.

NEW! Refer a business associate to Map Business Online in exchange for a $20 Amazon Gift Card!

Find out why over 25,000 business users log into www.MapBusinessOnline.com for their business mapping software and advanced sales territory mapping solution.

Contact: Geoffrey Ives geoffives@spatialteq.com or Jason Henderson jhenderson@spatialteq.com (800) 425-9035

MapPoint users please consider www.MapBusinessOnline.com as your MapPoint Replacement.

Please read customer reviews or review us at Capterra, G2Crowd (LinkedIn connected), or at the Salesforce.com AppExchange.

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